It’s impossible to post incisive observations on everything President Barack Obama’s mainstream media report and don’t report on significant stories and events that reflect negatively on their anointed one.

Some stories and events become so public that the MSM is forced to mention them and then, dutifully, bury them in the journalistic graveyard as if they had never happened.

Therefore, in the interests of public service, I present a few Obama-related stories which have either been ignored by the MSM or which the mainstreamers quickly relegated to the scrapheap along with tales of Martians invading Earth and Democrats acting stupidly.

The story of Dems so enamored of their hero that they superimposed a picture of Obama in place of the 50 stars on the American flag, reflecting their total ignorance of proper flag protocols, was briefly covered by the MSM, without commentary on those time-honored protocols.

The next steps might be his face on a trillion dollar bill and Mount Rushmore.

It gets much better or much worse, depending on your political perspective.

. The MSM gave little play to the thoughts of Steven Chu, Obama’s Energy Secretary, on gas prices both before and after he was appointed. Chu, who admitted he doesn’t drive a car, had advocated for European-level gas prices of ten dollars a gallon in the U.S. and repeated that wish even after prices began to soar.

The media also ignored his backtracking in the face of Republican derision and Chu now says, “I no longer share that view. . . Of course, we don’t want the price of gasoline to go up. We want it to go down.”

But, of course!

Outside of the administration, I don’t know who else shared Chu’s view of the benefits of astronomical gas prices. I suspect the nitwit DOE secretary got a call from one of Obama’s henchmen telling him to shut up and retreat from his imbecilic position.

. On a “comedic” front in America’s culture war, black comedian Chris Rock reverted to form and exploded when asked a question by conservative author of Obama Zombies and Hollywood Hypocrites, Jason Mattera.

Last year, Rock had incoherently said in Esquire, “When I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last–this is the act up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them,” and Mattera asked him to explain his baseless comments.

Instead of clarifying, Rock erupted, ripped the camera out of the hands of Mattera’s camerawoman, hurled it 50 feet, and challenged Mattera to a fight–while Rock was in the protection of two bodyguards.

. Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, clearly regards the president and his immigration policies the same way he thinks of rattlesnakes and illegal aliens. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=17403.)

Grandfather arrested for holding burglar at gun point while waiting for police to arrive
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Police, like public school teachers, wish to preserve their monopolies. That is why many police are opposed to citizens being armed (and even more strongly oppose citizens using their arms). In the same way, public school teachers are horrified by the idea that parents would either educate their own kids, or have the freedom to use their tax dollars to have some choice in who and how their kids are educated.

Sam Adams

The MSM gave little play to the thoughts of Steven Chu, Obama’s Energy Secretary, on gas prices both before and after he was appointed. Chu, who admitted he doesn’t drive a car, had advocated for European-level gas prices of ten dollars a gallon in the U.S. and repeated that wish even after prices began to soar.

The media also ignored his backtracking in the face of Republican derision and Chu now says, “I no longer share that view. . . Of course, we don’t want the price of gasoline to go up. We want it to go down.”

But, of course!
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Chu and Obama haven’t retreated from their belief that we need to move away from fossil fuels. Obama, in support of that belief, stated that “under my plan, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.”

Yet now that Obama owns the economy, he certainly doesn’t like the results of such a plan to reflect badly upon him or his re-election chances.

David Cameron and Barack Obama have been discussing an unprecedented international deal to force down the price of fuel.

In talks at the White House, the president is understood to have raised the idea of both the U.S. and Britain authorising a release of strategic oil reserves to increase supply.
Tim Yeo MP, Conservative Chairman of Energy and Climate Change select committee, added that any planned release of reserves was ‘entirely about the U.S. election’.

…..Mr Cameron later added: ‘We didn’t make any decisions about the release of global oil stocks. We have got to look at this issue carefully. Any move on this front ought to be to recognise supply disruptions and smooth that out.

‘There is a wider lesson we have got to learn, which is we have got to become less reliant on hydrocarbons. We have got to wean our economies off their addiction.’

But he added: ‘Short term, should we look to reserves? Yes we should.’

One source said details of the timing, volume and duration of a release of oil could be agreed by the summer. A move at that point would be convenient for Mr Obama, just months ahead of the U.S. elections in November.

Other countries would be approached and asked to join the scheme.

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What???? Obama would provide timed releases from the strategic oil reserves, simply to increase his chances of re-election?

Wow…I didn’t see that one coming.

Obama and friends can lie about the unemployment rate, as well as the extent of “economic recovery,” etc. Tey can’t lie about gas and food prices.

The cost of living in the U.S. rose in February by the most in 10 months, reflecting a jump in gasoline… The biggest jump in gasoline in more than a year accounted for about 80 percent of the increase in prices last month, leaving households with less money to spend on other goods and services.

In 1980, some 11 percent of young adults lived in multigenerational households, suggesting that a strong economy helped youngsters gain independence more quickly. Today, some 29 percent of 25- to 34-year olds either never moved out of their parents’ home or say they returned home in recent years because of the economy, according to the Pew report. Among 18- to 24-year olds, that figure is even higher – 53 percent of young adults in that age group live at home.

Bloodless Coup

Obama, Bell, Farrakhan, Ayers, Holder NOI, the New Black Panthers and the war on whitey.

The latest misperception out there -affecting the thinking of Republicans and Dumbasdirtcrats alike, is a meme that the president “can’t do anything about oil prices in foreign countries like Iran.”

Bull.

First of all, the most ignominious act of cowardice ever committed by U.S. leaders (and that’s saying a lot) was in pulling out of Iraq without a single oil contract to guarantee submarket prices on an uninterrupted flow of oil from Iraq into the U.S.

Such an agreement would have not only helped the U.S., but would have been a Marshall plan for Iraq, creating tons of wealth for that country through its oil industry for years.

Secondly, both BO and W had chances to intervene in Iran to push for regime change. Were this a top-line consideration, it is conceivable that U.S. involvement in the formation and establishment of a new ruling authority in Iran could at certain stopgaps, have led to oil export agreements.

W couldn’t get involved in Iran due to his loss of credibility in the U.S. after conquering Iraq, and BO wouldn’t do anything due to his love for the Mullahs, hatred of the U.S. oil economy and general dull wittedness.

What the Republicans and Demtreasonocrats alike should do, is preface their loser comments about oil with: “there’s nothing that a president can do about gasoline prices if he’s unimaginative, stupid and liberal, however….”

Sam Adams

Fiberal says:
March 16, 2012 at 8:15 am

The latest misperception out there -affecting the thinking of Republicans and Dumbasdirtcrats alike, is a meme that the president “can’t do anything about oil prices in foreign countries like Iran.”
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Obama yesterday repeated the statement that we consume 20% of the world’s oil while only having 2% of the world’s reserves.

Simply put…this is a lie.

Oil shale in the US holds 2 trillion barrels of oil. Yet we have had a moratorium on the development of oil shale on federal lands since Clinton was in office.

Currently the us uses about 5 million barrels per day. Two trillion barrels of oil would tide us over for 333,333 days or 913 years. Say that only a third of that oil is recoverable, that’s only 300 years.

Will it take years and years to develop that resource? Yep. So let’s get started now.

AC, I’m sure you have some source supporting your opinion. A DOE study during the Bush administration predicted that oil recovery from oil share would be economically viable if the price of oil was above $50.00 per barrel.

But that misses the fundamental point. With a moratorium on its development, private industry can’t determine if it is economical or not. They have no incentive to develop new technology or new approaches that may significantly decrease the cost of recovering this oil.

Lift the moratorium, lease the lands and let private industry determine how to best recover this resource.

After all, we are talking about a resource worth $200,000,000,000,000 at current oil prices. That is more than 10 times the size of the national debt. I think we can figure out a way of making it work.

wingmann

Why would any ENEMY of the USA want bHUSSEINo out of office?
He and his putrid progressive clan are doing a splended job of killing the USA at this moment!

Obama yesterday repeated the statement that we consume 20% of the world’s oil while only having 2% of the world’s reserves.

Sam,

It’s not only a lie, it’s irrelevant.

So what if we use 99% of the world’s oil? Its not like we drink the stuff.

So what if we use a lot of oil? That’s what a large, successful economy does, BO- you dumb fragile-X, moose-copulator.

Since when is a soveriegn (sic) nation not supposed to act in its own interest? Since when does a country have to be obligated to conserve in the interest of other countries? Like which ones? China?

Someone needs to tell liberals that the U.S. is not just any other country. We put our oil to great use not just in our own interest, but in the free-markets that benefit the industries and markets and ultimate freedom of other countries.

Unlike other countries, the U.S. actually produces good things with its wealth.

And BTW it has been through western technology that oil wells have been discovered, developed and modernized. Same with the refinement process. In contrast, Saudi Arabia nationalized their oil wells after accepting U.S. development and an agreement to export cheap oil to us.

And then what did they do? Joined a cartel.

In any event, we pay for oil. Payment represents an agreement between two parties called free-enterprise. That oil is on the global market.

If it were up to me, we would have taken every last drop of oil out of Saudi Arabia a long time ago. And dared any camel-drop Mullah to do something about it.

If countries want oil, then industrialize and compete for it. Don’t expect the U.S. to try and be “fair” by doing things not in our own economic interest.

What is the end game for doing that?

I mean, just what is the carrying capacity of the U.S. for other countries? When do we sit down and answer that f’ing question instead forcing benevolence on the part of the consumer-tax payer?

Ronpaul was close…so close …and then put on red swim flippers, got up on the roof and started clucking like a chicken. Just a little more Aricept might have done it.
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Sam, I’m glad you are able to listen to this BO POS, bc I can’t. I would never know what’s coming out of his foul mouth next unless I read about it.

AC

The spam filter limits the number of links, so here are two places to get started:

Oil shale contains kerogen, which must be upgraded to crude oil through an energy and water intensive process.

The point I was making is this: When you see an estimate for oil shale being economically feasible at around $100 a barrel (which likely won’t fall far due to water and natgas input costs), you have to remember that the number being quoted is the price point at which oil shale recovery, anywhere, in any quantity becomes profitable.

Of the two trillion or so BOE of shale oil resources, that number is based on the most cherry picked of extraction sites. The best quality oil shale in the most convenient location doesn’t even become profitable until we hit that point.

As with every mined resource, oil shale exists along a spectrum of recovery costs. The numbers you see represent the tip of the low end of the range if it is scaled up to huge economies of scale.

The two trillion BOE number is a hypothetical. While it might be possible to recover all of that, given enough time and money, the hard to get stuff will never be economically feasible. It might as well be on the moon. While we could get it if we wanted, the lack of a profit motive means it won’t be recovered.

There exists a price point above which a resource costs more than it is worth.

The point I was making is that much of the hypothetical two trillion BOE exists above that point.

We should be aggressively cutting the red tape currently strangling unconventional oil recovery. We need more domestic oil and we need more oil jobs. What won’t help is pretending we have more cheap oil than we really do. The best of the shale resources aren’t cheap, and statistically, most of them are more expensive than the cheapest of the oil shale. We have to admit the limitations and begin working around them, such as through an aggressive buildout of next generation nuclear reactors.

AC

Ronpaul was close…so close …and then put on red swim flippers, got up on the roof and started clucking like a chicken. Just a little more Aricept might have done it.

Meanwhile, the cool and collected Mitt Romney will act like a dignified and proper blueblooded Northeasterner while presiding over budget, currency, and debt disasters. Who says doom can’t have class and sophistication?

Fiberal

They have no incentive to develop new technology or new approaches that may significantly decrease the cost of recovering this oil.

Sam,

That’s absolutely right. Where there are profits everything changes, especially technology. That (and of course, war) is key to innovation.

(BTW there would be no one left to post on Moonbattery if everyone listened to AC – we would all have slit our wrists by now.)

Fiberal

Who says doom can’t have class and sophistication?

Well, one has to keep up appearances.

AC

Let me restate the problem as an analogy: there is a ton of shipwrecked treasure on the seafloor.

Some of it, like that on the Atocha, can be recovered inexpensively and in large quantity.

It would be a mistake to assume that the economics of recovering Atocha treasure applied to every shipwreck. Atocha sunk in 55 feet of water off the Florida Keys. You can swim in the ocean and see the wreck with your own eyes.

Good luck doing that with the wreck of the Titanic, which lies under 12,500 feet of water in the frigid North Atlantic.

AC

In oil industry jargon, everything on the Titanic is technically recoverable.

Hell, the ship itself is technically recoverable.

That doesn’t mean that any private enterprise can expect to make a profit doing so.

Fiberal

Sure AC, there are planets made out of solid diamond. That doesn’t mean that it would be feasible to go there with a pick-ax.

It’s not profound or interesting to explain how a resource becomes more costly than profitable at a certain point. Of course, there are always projects like that; some are just a priori-patently stupid, like windmills.

But others can go somewhere. If you know you have profits at the beginning and the potential for more profits going forward, you invest. And by the time you get to the break-even point, the technology you started with may be antiquated. If not, bail.

What is important is to get started if you have a certain predictable return. You may then discover a worm hole.

And BTW a nuclear power plant shouldn’t necessarily prohibit fracking or the other way round – just don’t put the two together on the same acre of land.

AC

Yes, we should get started with shale oil. All I said was that the two trillion BOE number cannot be reliably used as the basis for estimating how many years of reserves we have.

Shale oil projects can go somewhere, just not in the quantity suggested by the numbers being thrown around.

ANWR can go somewhere, but it won’t get us off foreign oil.

Deepwater drilling can go somewhere, but it won’t revitalize the economy because of the high cost of extraction.

Our energy strategy needs to be an all of the above, but we must be realistic about what we can expect for returns.

If you’re so excited about shale oil then feel free to invest as much as you like. What’s left of our capitalist system permits you to take that risk. If you’re right, you’ll become fabulously wealthy.

AC Opined:
“The point I was trying to make is that there is a difference between reserves, technically recoverable reserves, and economically recoverable reserves.

There is actually no oil in oil shale.

Oil shale contains kerogen, which must be upgraded to crude oil through an energy and water intensive process.”
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Technology changes economic feasibility every day. I remember well discussions as to whether it was feasible to create a silicon chip with 64k of memory. Same thing with oil shale; while it might be uneconomical to mine the stuff and process it in a retort, in-situ processing changes both the economics as well as the amount of water needed for the process.

As to oil shale not actually containing any “oil”…I believe you would find my credentials on the topic satisfactory for our purposes.

“The two trillion BOE number is a hypothetical.”
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It’s not really hypothetical; it is an estimate of how much “oil” is there, not how much is economically recoverable.
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“We should be aggressively cutting the red tape currently strangling unconventional oil recovery. We need more domestic oil and we need more oil jobs. What won’t help is pretending we have more cheap oil than we really do. The best of the shale resources aren’t cheap, and statistically, most of them are more expensive than the cheapest of the oil shale.”
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The oil produced from oil shale is much more suitable for use as diesel fuel than gasoline. Since politicians are bound and determined to spend public money, one could argue that the defense department should get involved in developing this resource, purely on the basis of national defense, whether in the sort to mid term its development has any influence on gas prices or not. If the Straits of Hormuz get blocked, it would be nice to know that we have some energy alternatives.

And….in-situ extraction, using nuclear power to heat the rock makes excellent sense if you want to produce liquid fuels.

Sam Adams

Let the left traffick in hopium. Conservatives deal in facts.
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Good engineers can develop technology that can be game changers.

AC

Portable nuclear reactors as a source for the conversion heat is a game changer, but that is going to be off the table for, well, forever. Current shale oil economics are governed heavily by the price of natural gas, and also, the ability to get natural gas from a well to a shale oil mine (same with water).

No matter what engineers develop, mining shale oil is going to be expensive and energy intensive. The best we can hope for is a lesser degree of bad. Even with nuclear, it’s still a low EROEI process.

You and I understand the limitations of the two trillion BOE number, however the broader public doesn’t. The tangent began when I attempted to qualify what that number meant in the broader scope.

Oil shale does not contain oil. It contains kerogen, which can be converted to oil at significant expense and with significant resource inputs. People need to understand the process is not as simple as digging up rocks and squeezing black liquid out.

Shale oil is no Spindletop and it never will be.

I don’t expect shale resources to bring the price down to provide broader economic relief. If anything, the price of crude will continue climbing as long as Helicopter Ben keeps printing money at a frenzied pace.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9143/index1.html
“As for in-situ retorting — heating oil shale in place and extracting it from the ground — Shell Oil Company has successfully conducted a small-scale field test based on slow underground heating using electric power. While larger-scale tests are needed, Shell anticipates that this in-situ method will be competitive at crude oil prices in the mid-$20s per barrel.”
That’s right; Shell’s process can be profitable selling oil in the $20 to $30 per barrel range. Their process requires minimal water and uses electricity for heating the oil shale in place. A 160 acre tract of land could produce 300 million barrels.

Of course the EPA’s clean air act has a huge effect on economics, based upon allowable sulfur content of the fuel, and public policy has whipsawed prospects for oil shell development for sixty years.
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Oil shale does not contain oil. It contains kerogen, which can be converted to oil at significant expense and with significant resource inputs. People need to understand the process is not as simple as digging up rocks and squeezing black liquid out.
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Shell also developed in place hydrogenation of the oil. The economics, IMHO, look very promising as a way to produce primarily diesel fuel. Of course oil shale doesn’t contain “oil” and heat is required to convert the kerogen to liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons. Unfortunately many people aren’t interested in the technical details; I attribute it to the public schooling that has been provided to the masses.

Still, if oil shale development could bring the price of diesel below $3.00 per gallon, that could have a very positive effect upon the economy, let alone benefit German car manufacturers.